Spring 2014

Sovereignty or Identity? The Significance of the Diaoyutai/Senkaku Islands Dispute for Taiwan

Boyu CHEN

Narratives of the Diaoyutai/Senkaku Islands dispute expose the spectrum of Taiwan’s national identity. While Taiwan has long been struggling to legitimise its claim of representing China or to become an independent state, some of the Taiwanese people still welcome their former colonial master, Japan. This paper draws on academic and journalistic work on how Taiwan has responded to the islands dispute. The author also turns to the internet to examine popular sentiments in the region by examining netizens’ discourse on the islands from Taiwan’s largest bulletin board system (BBS), Station-PTT. This survey finds that the sovereignty dispute surfaces issues of national identity.